St. Ursula's Girls Against the Atomic Bomb
Valerie Hurley
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2003 MacAdam/Cage Publishing
ISBN: 1931561559

How can an 18 year-old who is haunted by the world's problems possibly concentrate on chemistry & trigonometry?

Even though I've categorized Valerie Hurley's debut novel as literature & fiction, it is a book older teenagers will relish, it's a lively, tell-it-like-it-is tale which may help a lot of teens make some sense of what they see about them, & the grown-up world into which they are heading.

I know, that's a tall order for a little book, however, St. Ursula's Girls Against the Atomic Bomb can & does fit the bill. It is hilarious & desparate, impatient & charming, breathless & profound ... all the aspects people on the verge of adulthood roil through on a minute-by-minute whirlwind ... which we, in the sedateness of adulthood, prefer to forget.

Make no mistake about it, St. Ursula's Girls Against the Atomic Bomb is for grown-ups too -- because it gets inside a prickly subject which confounds us -- social conscience -- what point the petty details of education when we're faced with global destruction?

Another aspect of St. Ursula's Girls Against the Atomic Bomb is the individual within the cookie-cutter education system. What happens to them? While we Americans pride ourselves on rooting for the underdog, we also have our hang-ups about those who push the envelope, those square pegs who are forced into round holes .. those who are different from the herd ... & Raine Rassaby is certainly one of those!

Raine is a maiden who uses her mind, thinks Big Thoughts, if a bit like a tv erratically changing channels -- perhaps she has ADD. She does have a severe case of one of the most trying & embarrassing things teachers must confront: A Social Conscience. This naturally, propels everyone in Raine's life into both amusing adventures & serious life-changing situations.

Set in a Catholic high school in Manhattan, New York, this is the tale of a teenager who yearns to be a social reformer & because of what she does, she must visit a student counselor, who in turn must revisit why he took a career in that field.

There are three flies in an otherwise unblemished ointment:
1. That an all-girls convent school run by nuns hires a male student counselor. In this day & age a dubious arrangement & that his charge's élan rubs off on him in his own empty marriage.
2. Raine, a physically mature young woman still caged in the puerile world of high school, is currently intimate with a contemporary young man. This is skipped over with mind-boggling simplicity, as if it was nothing. Especially when much of the resolution hinges upon the results of this relationship.
3. As an only child, Raine has nothing serious or real to do. Sure she has homework which she aces in minutes & classes which she surpasses almost before they're begun, however, in her wealthy, erudite domestic life she has no duties to speak of, nobody to take care of & thus, lives a life of remarkable barrenness. This naturally, is a petrie dish for foment & angst, & Raine's untidy, hectic life unravels as any will, built upon avoidance, pseudo-intellectualism & lack of purpose. Raine is a tornado of energy & thought, about to touch down & wreak a bit of havoc. Which she does!

Those three points & nary a mention of hormones (or sexually transmitted diseases or contraception), notwithstanding, I enjoyed St. Ursula's Girls Against the Atomic Bomb -- while it is written at an exhausting pace, it made me think & reminded me of my own maidenhood when I too was caught in the cyclone of hormones, strove to be a good human, to labor for a just society ... & got clobbered for such naive idealism.
(04/18/04)

Rebecca